Problem: In history class, the girl to boy ratio is $3$ to $10$. If there are $40$ boys, how many girls are there?
Solution: A ratio of $3$ girls to $10$ boys means that there is a group of $3$ girls for every group of $10$ boys. If there are $40$ boys, then there are $4$ groups of $10$ boys each. Because we know the ratio is $3:10$ , there must be $4$ groups of $3$ girls each. There is a total of $12$ girls in history class.